The world around me is springing to life. The streets are lined with blossoms and new green leaves. Everywhere I see the possibilities of a new season.

And here I am renewed. No longer beaten down, freed from those people who would suck the energy and light out of my life. Now I have surrounded myself with people who lift my spirits. People I can trust and enjoy, so that even the most difficult day is satisfying.

My winter is over and spring has begun. I stand here ready for this new season and all its possibilities. And with that in mind, it is time to pick up the pen.

A friend of mine recently gave me some good advice: never wish away your time. You can wish you were somewhere else or doing something else but never wish away a minute of the time you have.

It is so common to hear people doing this “I wish it was Friday” or “I wish this day was over”, and we all slip into this mode on occasion without realising what this means. Time is the one of the most valuable and irreplaceable resources that you can ever possess, along with your health and unconditional love. There is a finite amount of time available to each of us and we can never reclaim time which has passed us by.

We can hope and plan for the future, we can look forward to things which are yet to come and we can do all this while living in the moment we have right now.

So next time you catch yourself thinking “I wish it was later already” try changing that thought, I’m going to try wishing I was at the beach!

I am becoming reacquainted with the lighter side of life. Rising out of a quagmire where I have been neglecting my writing and neglecting this blog. The only constant habit I have maintained is always carrying a notebook and pen so I can scribble any errant thought which holds my attention.

So, while I am getting back into my groove I thought I would begin again by sharing with you a few lines of the snippets of thoughts which have made it to paper in these last few months:

“Nature seeks balance, even in her most eclectic of designs.”

“There is something beautiful in the patterns of flocking birds as they dance across the sky.”

“The play of shadow and sun in the morning mist.”

“Taming the wild garden.”

“As I walk the line between light and shadow.”

“Watching the world stream by in all her many shades of green.”

And with this I am remembering to take happiness wherever it can be found, in the little moments and details of life. I am remembering to look on the world with the wonder I had as a child and I am reminded that everything in transient and has value even when you don’t see it.

The habits of complacency are hard to break. They sneak so softly into your life you may not even notice them.

It’s so easy to point the finger of blame at things outside of yourself; work, upbringing, love, loss. But in the end we each choose our own life. We choose which of our circumstances we accept and which we will change.

It is scary when you realise you’ve gone so far down a path you don’t remember your way back. It’s scary to commit to change. To determine that even though you may fall you will keep on getting up and pushing forward.

And so the hero is afraid, and faces failure more often than success. But the hero picks themself up and tries again and again until in the end they are triumphant.

Yes, it is scary to shake up the pattern of your life however comfortable it may seem. But it is far more tragic to think you may miss out on life if you don’t. So out of a desire for life I struggle. I struggle to find the energies and passions that once drove me to action. I struggle for momentum and for zest.

I sit here in the morning sun, listening to a magpie’s song. I am so in love with life, how could I forget. When I look at the world through a child’s eye, with all its wonders all around, I could not bear to miss a moment of it.

The days pass by, and summer descends into autumn. The ivy on the barracks turns from green to flaming red. The sun rises later each morning, slow to melt through the chill fog. And you wonder where the time slipped away to.

Now is the time to reap the last of the harvest, and to clear away the fading summertime abundance from the garden. Feed and nourish the earth. Time to plant the winter’s crops while there is still some memory of warmth left in the ground.

Change is in the crisp wind. Whispering for you to prepare, to nourish your soul and stockpile your nuts and knowledge. Be grateful for the days in the sun and feather your nest for the months ahead. Reflect on where you are and where you want to go, for soon there will be much shorter blooms of light to illuminate your days.

I am watching hot air balloons drift across the grey-blue sky of morning. Bright sparks of colour floating in a monochrome vista, like lazy errant thoughts.

And the seasons follow each other as they always have, yet there is something new to discover in each of them. The relentless changing faces of life. New growth, old growth and the constant rhythm slow persistent evolution.

A chance for a fresh start and endless possibilities. There’s an energy to the beginning of a new year which encourages us to cleanse last year’s baggage and commit to making change in our life. Turning over a new leaf.

Everyone is tinged with the aura of celebration and beginnings.

What are you going to do to make this year different from the last? I am going to change the patterns in my life that hold me back. How I will achieve this and measure it is another story. First there are a lot of little milestones to be set, and habits to be changed.

They say it only takes a month to break a habit. That has got to take some concerted effort. And you need to know what you are changing that habit for, and what will replace that old behaviour. Decide where you want to be, what is keeping you from being there and break that down into small singular parts which you can change one by one.

It is truly a magical thing to have your own piece of outdoor space, a little corner of land that is your home.

What a privilege it is to be able to go outside and lie on the grass, to look up at the stars. To enjoy the perfect sharp sounds of the night, and gaze up at the yellow full moon. Enjoying the songs of crickets.

And then, when the sun rises and the birds sing, how wonderful it is to see the colours come to life. Butterflies play on the breeze and the world smells green.

The first of the plums are starting to blush with ripeness, and summer is just days around the corner.

This change of seasons is also the closing of NaNoWriMo. These last few days of spring will be full of furious typing by tens of thousands of writers around the globe. And if all goes well, sometime in the next year or so, there will be some new novels born from this month of literary abandonment that we all can enjoy.

I am one of those typing manically to try and achieve my goal (50,000 words by the 30th of November). And in between I’m looking at my garden growing wild with my neglect, and wondering if I’ve done enough to prepare it for the sun-filled months ahead. Only six more days and I can play in the dirt again!

While life beckons me to come back and enjoy it’s richness, I am happy to have had NaNo to push me to write every day (almost) and to find my way past any plot walls. Without it, when you get to that point where you don’t know what comes next, it’s so easy to put it aside for another time. NaNoWriMo gives you the urgency to think it through, to try other avenues you may not have envisioned at first. It has been a wonderful experience, and I will try it again.

I still have thousands of words, and many chapters to go and less than a week to get there. So it is back into the wilds of my imagination for me! And I wonder what I can make with the plums this year…

little shards
of a shattered mind
strands of self
scatter in the wind
your reflection
is fractured
where the cracks show
a spider web view
giving away pieces
of my person
chunks of heart and soul
worth less than time
snatching moments
waiting
to feel whole again
and my mind drifts
like confetti
dancing on the breeze

Featured Posts

The world around me is springing to life. The streets are lined with blossoms and new green leaves. Everywhere I see the possibilities of a new season. And here I am renewed. No longer beaten down, freed from those people who would suck the energy and light out of my life. Now I have surrounded […]

A friend of mine recently gave me some good advice: never wish away your time. You can wish you were somewhere else or doing something else but never wish away a minute of the time you have. It is so common to hear people doing this “I wish it was Friday” or “I wish this […]

I am becoming reacquainted with the lighter side of life. Rising out of a quagmire where I have been neglecting my writing and neglecting this blog. The only constant habit I have maintained is always carrying a notebook and pen so I can scribble any errant thought which holds my attention. So, while I am […]

The habits of complacency are hard to break. They sneak so softly into your life you may not even notice them. It’s so easy to point the finger of blame at things outside of yourself; work, upbringing, love, loss. But in the end we each choose our own life. We choose which of our circumstances […]